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“But, Monsieur Sulian!” interrupted Madame Hortense.

“There’s no Monsieur Sulian about it. D’you imagine that I’ve navigated for fifteen years before taking hold of things here for defunct Monsieur le Marquis, without learning how to keep my eyes open? Bah! I’ve seen in my time many sorts of female quality, brown and red and blond and black, pretty and otherwise, clever and stupid, good, bad, and worse, but just such a piece as this one—!” He left his indictment incomplete, perhaps for lack of expressions fitted to his listener’s ears, and allowed his long arms to fall to his sides in a discouraged manner.

“But,” Hortense Gervex began again—“but what in the world made you take such a dislike to Mademoiselle Seton, Monsieur Sulian? She’s doing you no harm!”

“Yes, believe that and drink water!” he derisively retorted. “Look at her now, do, just to oblige me!” He was angrily pointing downward, and Hortense Gervex bent over the coping to see what he meant.

Plenhöel and Marguerite were swimming shoulder to shoulder toward the open sea, with that calm, regular stroke which is so telling for long-distance work. On the float Basil’s tall form showed clear as wax against the pale shimmer of the water, and, with her back turned to him, sat Laurence, on the very edge of the planking, her feet dipping in the sea, her hair falling around her mantle-wise and trailing behind her. Suddenly she turned, swung herself up on the float, and stood before him, her arms uplifted to raise above her head the shining mass of her tresses, her perfect figure displayed to its best advantage by a bathing-dress of pure white cashmere that clung very lovingly; and there was something so challenging in her statuesque pose that the term of “professional beauty,” naïvely applied to her a fortnight or so before by Marguerite, took on, indeed, a newer and more expressive meaning.